Verona Joyce Bennett, RIP

Joyce Verona Bennett, 1917 - 2013

Today I was at the funeral of my grandmother, who checked out around Christmas time, a few days shy of her 97th birthday.  It was a short and unremarkable service, but interesting nevertheless and I'm glad I went.

I'd completely forgotten, for example, that her given name was not in fact Joyce (the name she always used), but was actually Verona.  And whilst I knew that she'd travelled fairly widely around the UK and Europe, I didn't know that she had taken her first and only journey by aeroplane - from Exeter to Bristol - aged 93.  She'd made the trip just for the experience, apparently.  I hope that I can also reach such an age and have new adventures of my own.

I'm not going to labour the point, but I'd guess that 1917 was not an auspicious time to be born as a female to a family of modest means in a small provincial English town.   Getting pregnant at 21 by a soldier who then dissappeared off to war (the offspring of this congress being my mother) hardly improved her prospects. Nevertheless, she did prosper.  No doubt the widespread upheaval within society that war with Germany precipitated was a good opportunity.

Mum was mostly brought up by her Grandmother, but not without difficulty.  Being an unmarried mother in 1940s Britain would have probably been a drab and colourless affair, not helped the inflexible attitudes of the local Christians.

Yet, despite all this, she managed to to steer a life-course that was sufficiently interesting to merit a feature article in the Sunday Independent (more news to me) and a couple of Channel 4 documentaries (which we had all watched, agog, wondering what she might disclose about our hitherto unknown blood relative).

I remember her as a feisty lady of strong opinions, and as my Dad once said, she would likely have made impressive use of the opportunities that being born into a later age would have given her.  Not that I think she was in any way dis-satisfied with her lot.

Farewell, Grandma.

A Season of Cricket, 2013

When Whitchurch on Thames CC suffered some sort of IT failure that resulted in the loss of the whole of last year's averages, I was just a little peeved about it.  So this year, I thought I'd keep a record through the season of my performances, just a little something to keep the focus as the season heads through those difficult months of mid-summer when the batsmen are getting themselves into form on flat pitches.

The purpose of this little post is to update myself on how the season went in numbers.

In a great summer of cricketing weather I managed to get in 35 matches; probably some sort of record.  Of these, 13 were for Mandarins, the rest for WCC or their opposition (1), who were short.

I bowled in all but one of these games, the one being when I was suffering a cricked neck; and got through 217 overs (phew!).  40 of these were maidens and from the rest 809 runs were given away.  The harvest in batsmen for all this was 41 wickets.  That's a pleasing economy rate of 3.73 runs per over and averages 19.73 runs / wicket, striking slightly more frequently than once every 32 balls.  My best numbers came at Goring on the second played match of the season: 8 - 0 - 15 - 3.

Definitely the secret to a good average is to bowl to passive batters, as the openers frequently are; and try to get yourself a fielding team that can catch and run around a bit.  WCC do that creditably, though Mandarins are a little slow on their feet these days.

I collected a rather small number of catches - five - the last one being at the back-end of July.  Note for next year: keep a log of drops, half catches and feeble pretences on cold days that "it wasn't quite there".

The batting doesn't need to be gone into much detail.  Going in as tail-end-charlie in a run-chase is not always easy an easy place to score from.  So maybe an average of 12.46 with the best innings (29*) in October's last fixture is not too dreadful; but then again, there is a reason why I tend to go in this position, and it's not just because I'm opening the bowling.

Looking out for warm days in the spring of 2014.

Tragic Case

How You Know Caissa Has Forsaken You

Strictly between us chess players... My form on the board has been rather poor of late. My team mates know it, and I know it. This is my self indulgent notes-to-self after Wednesday's debacle...

• My pieces are not the equal of my opponents.  My opponent and I are managers of two teams but, on a man for man basis, every piece on my side is a weakling compared to his.


• My pieces get in the way of each other and refuse to work together.   It's as though they are all enemies; of each other, and me.  Some have clearly gone rogue.


• My opponent's moves seem to happen more frequently than mine.  On his turn, he seems to be making more moves than me.  My own pieces seem content to stay at home today.


• I know I'm losing, even in positions which to anyone else would be OK.  I've seen them in books and know, objectively, they're fine; but at the back of my mind, I know I'm losing, if not already flat lost.


• I struggle for ages to find any move that doesn't lose immediately, and yet my position continues to  degrade with every clock tick. On the other side of the board, I see so many resources!  It's inconceivable that, bunny though he is, he won't find the easy moves that'll beat me.


• I know that I'm going to lose this evening, even before the clocks have started and no matter how weak my opponent.  He simply has to turn up and push some wood.  If necessary, I'll help him beat me; and if he's a real patzer, I'll probably selfmate.

Captain Patzer

The Aesthetics of Charting

Although I place very little faith in the predictive abilities of stock-price charts, I can't claim to ignore them entirely.  Quite apart from the simple curiosity of sampling the opinion of other market participants, there is the simple elegance of the chart itself.  The one above is generated by Sharescope, the investment database that I've used for some years now.  It shows the recent decline of the Euro vs. the pound, which seems to have accelerated since sinking below 0.855 on December 12th.

I should point out that the chart is much more detailed on screen, and the package as a whole does a lot more than drawing elegant charts.  If I can claim any aesthetic credit, it would be for customising the chart itself - there are many, many options.


Below is another example, also of EUR/GBP, but over a longer period.  We might conclude that the Euro is merely towards the lower end of the trading range that began in January 2009, but that it might easily sink to 0.8 before finding any support.

Incidentally, I meant what  I said: I really don't take this stuff seriously.  No-one should trade using any of this stuff; I reckon there's about a 50:50 chance that the Euro will follow my interpretation of these charts; as far as I can tell, the EUR/GBP rate is random.

Review of 75 Worst ways to Die

This dark but hilarious book provides an account of 75 gruesome but all-too-real mechanisms by which life can be extinguished. Each process is described in the second person, designed to put you in more clearly into the hot seat. Some are unique (polonium), others the result of bad luck (lightning) and still others are contenders for a Darwin Award (binge-drinking, volunteering to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, using a hair-dryer in the bath etc.).

I never quite worked out what the authors do when they're not penning macabre yet strangely compelling books, but the afterword was penned by a funeral director who has noticed that deaths in the under-25s appear to correlate well with having a tattoo. There are many other arresting anecdotes in this strangely compelling volume.

Review of Fifty Years in Wall Street

Henry Clews was a 19th C broker who wrote an account of the personalities he met during his 50 years in Wall Street. He writes in that peculiarly convoluted style that was obviously natural in those years but which makes the text difficult to "scan" in 2011. I enjoyed this book overall, but skipped some half-chapters and probably didn't absorb as much as a I might have.

What's amazing is just how blatantly corrupt the whole scene was at the time: stock manipulation was apparently rife, with concert parties, insider dealing and "bought" judges. Crises were frequent, with individuals, brokers and sometime banks "failing". Investigations were often held; but then as now, the fat cats were rarely brought to book. Greed was as strong a driving force in those days as it ever has been, and fraudsters often were the beneficiaries:

It is marvellous how the idea of large profits, when presented to the mind in a plausible light, has the effect of stifling suspicion.

The book is heavily abridged, but could have benefited from some notes to explain the context of the economic and financial events. No doubt a contemporary reader would have been more familiar with the crashes and events that are discussed (1876, Black Friday, Erie, etc.). I, however, often failed to understand the significance of characters mentioned in passing who played significant roles in this or that role. We learn very little of the author himself.

Clews firm was Livermore, Clews & Co. Presumably the Livermore was Jesse, who was almost certainly the later author of a much more compelling narrative, "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator". Read that first.

An Odd (Series of) Co-incidence(s)

When I left home at age 18, it was to study at University College London.  Nothing extra special about that, I was at UCL, that's all.

Three years later, degree certificate in hand, I secured a job at International Computers Limited, commonly know as ICL.  Somewhat similar acronym, but there we go.

Five years later I decided to move on from this first job, and ended up at a management consultancy firm called Coopers & Lybrand, often abbreviated - by clients at least - to C&L.  Now that is odd, those two letters keep travelling with me.

Three years on from then - and we're talking early 90's here - I got using this "internet" thing, which was a bit of a nerdy thing to do at the time.  Posting to an early bulletin board, CIX, (which I'm glad to see is still in business) I "met" a guy who offered me a job.  A couple of interviews later and I'm working for CACI Ltd.  It wasn't a commonly-used abbreviation, but I can't help but notice that the two words making up the name begin with C and L.

That's four.  But there's more!  As part of the dot.com mania, my bit of CACI was sold off to a company called Cerillion Ltd.  Once again, it wasn't commonly used, but notice those two first letters....

I didn't stay with Cerillion more than a year or two, moving instead to a London University.  There are several worthy institutions in London, and I didn't end up back at my alma mater, as the Americans say, but instead at ... can you guess?  Its acronym ends, of course, with C and L, and as it happens the first letter matches that of my first employer.

I remain working for Imperial College London.